Crocus September 2017

[sokol]

When those pictures are maid? I suppose that not this autumn ?

The bulbs were collected in April on Kefalinia and planted in my friends garden. They flowered there last weekend.

[sokol]

I like this photogenic species, Crocus cambessedesii.

[Yann]

Crocus tournefortii, funny how late mines are this autumn.

[Janis Ruksans]

Strange, strange season - strange (usually darker) colours, development timer etc., etc. To illustrate this here picture of white form of Crocus speciosus from Ijevan in Armenia made in 2015 and yesterday in 2017. You can see that stock increased well, but where is beautiful white colour? Similar lilac shaded this autumn is white form of Crocus bolensis.
I'm usually destroying corms which at repotting time looks ill or poor, they are very exceptional cases, if the plant is very rare, when I'm planting them, but then on label I'm writing - year and words - bad  quality. Surprisingly, but in most cases they recover and sometimes even grew better than those of same form which looked perfect. In 2016 I potted 5 corms of Crocus kotschyanus albus labeled as "almost died" - this year harvested 3 corms of superb quality and size, 2 died. So I saved this nice and extremely rare in cultivation form.
Shortly ago I showed interesting C. speciosus aff. sample from high altitudes in Iran, which had very small, very stoloniferous corms. It was growing together with Crocus gilanicus. Corms were so small that separation was not easy, so in one pot were planted both species. Here you can compare size of both when they started blooming here.

[Janis Ruksans]

As I wrote in previous entry - season is very stranger - some blooms much earlier than usually should be. Crocus caspius here usually is late bloomer, but now it started blooming and usually just white forms blooms earlier, but now just lilac one came out.
Here you can compare very nice type Crocus pallasii from Crimea and Crocus pallasii aff. from Samos Island, Greece.
Crocus hadriaticus collected at Langadia (together with C. georgii) has very nicely striped segments outside.
From Europeans now blooms C. nudiflorus.

[Janis Ruksans]

And last entry for today (at least for this morning)
Crocus pallasii aff. collected at Dirmil gec. in SW Turkey
Crocus turcicus from Lebanon
Very early blooming of C. pulchellus from Mt. Falakro in Greece
I have very few old cultivars of Dutch Crocus speciosus grown by me since 60-ies of last century and the last one to bloom always was Oxonian, now it blooms together with usually much earlier Artabir, but Albus still didn't show even noses.
Strange season...

[Pauli]

Janis,

I very much enjoy your fantastic pictures of rare crocuses that I will never see in real life!

[sokol]

I agree with you Herbert it is always a pleasure to see these pictures.

[sokol]

Let's stay at this difficult group. A friend of mine has sent me pictures of two Crocusses today, that he had collected at Kefalonia this year, probably at Enos. I am not sure whether this is Crocus hellenicus or not.

Some additional pictures have shown that this Crocus is Crocus mazziaricus.

I didn't told you that we did the trip together and we collected the Crocus bulbs at the same places. It is confusing that there are always different Crocus blooming. He had Crocus boryi some days ago whereas I had Crocus niveus at the same time. Today Crocus hadriaticus opened its flowers here and he has Crocus mazziaricus now.

Two further pictures not from our trip this year.

[Janis Ruksans]

Some additional pictures have shown that this Crocus is Crocus mazziaricus.

I didn't told you that we did the trip together and we collected the Crocus bulbs at the same places. It is confusing that there are always different Crocus blooming. He had Crocus boryi some days ago whereas I had Crocus niveus at the same time. Today Crocus hadriaticus opened its flowers here and he has Crocus mazziaricus now.

Two further pictures not from our trip this year.

Yes, this definitely is C. mazziaricus and not hellenicus.

[David Nicholson]

Some common ones from the greenhouse today:-

Crocus longiflorus, from Crocus Group seed 2009
C. vernus, from Crocus Group seed 2012
C. goulimyi

[sokol]

David, your Crocus vernus looks like a Crocus pulchellus.

[sokol]

Crocus gilanicus started today.

[David Nicholson]

David, your Crocus vernus looks like a Crocus pulchellus.

Thank you Stefan, the name should have told me it wasn't right shouldn't it

[sokol]

Thank you Stefan, the name should have told me it wasn't right shouldn't it

Yes it should .